Noosa
| Date: | 8th May 2005 |
| Time: | 06:00am - 08:30am |
| Tide: | High at 07:41am (Noosa Heads) |
| Launch site: | Life Saving Club |
| Water temperature: | 22°C |
| Lures/baits used: | Hard-bodied and metal lures |
| Report: | Reports of Tuna and Mackeral busting up schools of baitfish in Laguna Bay lured me to Noosa to join the growing number of kayak anglers before the season ended. |
| Being new to this style of fishing, the session was a learning experience (another way of saying I didn't catch anything). Sitting on the kayak among wheeling, diving Terns with Tuna weighing several kilograms smashing through the surface was awesome. | |
| The bug has bitten and this winter will see me acquiring some new tackle more suited to the task, in preparation for next summer. | |
| Submitted by: | Tony |
| Date: | 15th April 2005 |
| Time: | N/A |
| Tide: | Run out |
| Launch site: | N/A |
| Water temperature: | N/A |
| Lures/baits used: | Live baits |
| Report: | I recently bought myself a cast net to start drifting with livies and this trip paid off with a PB flattie measuring 58cm. I was paddling back home against the tide with a heavy sinker. Over a hole in a small channel was an almighty hit and the fun began. I had never had a good fight with a flathead before, so when this guy gave me some stiff competition my immediate excitement was that I had hooked something different from the standard flathead and bream. Not to be though. |
| Apart from him I pulled in a 47cm flattie and many under size bream. Admittedly I'm now getting bored of these same catches, so am gearing myself to go out into the bay and try my luck with some of the mackerel and tuna that are running. | |
| Submitted by: | Nick R. |
| Date: | 26th January 2005 |
| Time: | N/A |
| Tide: | N/A |
| Launch site: | Noosa Waters |
| Water temperature: | N/A |
| Lures/baits used: | Hard bodied lures |
| Report: | I braved the horrendous rain and wind on Australia Day and trolled around the locked canals of Noosa Waters. This area has now become quite a fish habitat because it has a lock to the Noosa river and as such holds fish and secondly keeps non-residents out. I was able to drop my yak from the street. |
| I decided to troll my new "Jack Snack" lure by C-Lures which is a local maker up here. Apparently the great colour is gold but as they are in so much demand I had to settle for the yellow. I was rewarded very quickly with a hard punching Bream of 30cm and then a few minutes later by another smaller one going about 25cm. I was using heavier gear because of the Mangrove Jack population in the system. I had 20lb braid and a 50lb leader - I was taking no chances on a new lure. The heavier gear and the solid hits made getting the fish to boat side very easy. | |
| I intend to do some soft plastic flicking around the many jetties here. Without a tide and no hoons on the water (max. 4 knots) it's just the wind that can put a dampner on this exercise. If you're looking for somewhere different, then I'd recommend this area. | |
| Submitted by: | Nick R. |
| Date: | 28th November 2004 |
| Time: | 09:30am - 02:00pm |
| Tide: | High at 08:30am (Noosa) |
| Launch site: | Weyba Creek |
| Water temperature: | N/A |
| Lures/baits used: | Soft plastics |
| Report: | I decided to get out of the way of the weekend crowd and head to a creek off Lake Weyba. The lake is extremely shallow so rarely is a boat there and I certainly wouldn't expect any in the creek. I had asked around the traps if anyone had been fishing up in that creek and most shops had said "no", although they expected fish would be present. |
| I launched my yak about 200m upstream of the Weyba Creek footbridge which is just near my house. I had a 2.5km paddle upstream to get to the mouth of the creek but I had a large incoming tide helping my progress. A better launch site is at the end of Lake Weyba Road where there is a small picnic park with nice views out across the lake. The creek entrance is about 900m to the south of this park on the western side of the lake. It has perfect water access. The lake is only about 1 foot deep around the edges, so it's best to stick to the channel until you see the creek mouth although after 2km's of paddling I was happy to have a walk. | |
| The mouth of the creek deepens to about 5 feet and stays that way for the first kilometre. There are not many snags in this area, although the occasional submerged log was evident. As I hadn't been here before I tried flicking some plastics around these. This first kilometre is a great area to troll for flathead before hitting the deeper water where the snags are abundant. | |
| When you hit a sharp left hand bend its time to put the trolling gear away and start with the snags. The water is deeper and extremely clear. I stuck with Atomic and E3 2" Fat Grubs in natural colours. After this initial left hand bend there is good submerged snags along the left bank (eastern side) where plenty of fish were holding. The creek then swings right and heads west again and there is an enormous submerged tree on this corner and again plenty of fish could be seen under it. I flicked around here for awhile before heading further upstream. The next kilometre looked like a graveyard of fallen trees. Almost every 50 feet had a very old and large structure in the water. I could easily drift down the middle and cast to both sides. I tended to anchor and work each structure more directly before moving on to the next. | |
| I turned after about 2 hours on the creek, but plenty more structure lined the banks for as far as the eye could see. I had a long paddle home so put out the trolling gear with a Pink Squidgie Wriggler and paddled 2 hours home. | |
| I got plenty of knocks and touches but no hookups and no large hits. I did see plenty of bream though which was a disappointment. I also saw some quite large fish that seemed to be schooling but was unsure what they were - possibly mullet. | |
| All in all I enjoyed the day even though no fish were hooked. It's a beautiful area with absolutely no noise. I saw heaps of fauna including some large sea eagles sitting through the trees. I think a more experienced fisho would be better attuned to it than me, but I enjoyed the exercise and it certainly beat thrashing the water with the weekend warriors this time of year. | |
| Submitted by: | Nick R. |
| Date: | 18th June 2004 |
| Time: | 07:30am - 09:30am |
| Tide: | High at 08:59 am (Munna Point) |
| Launch site: | Culgoa Point |
| Water temperature: | N/A |
| Lures/baits used: | Bait - frozen prawns |
| Report: | As earlier in the week I had trolled lures and flicked soft plastics around the canals with little result, today I decided to use up some frozen prawns left over from a bait fishing outing that my wife and I had enjoyed in a hired tinny yesterday. |
| I launched in front of the holiday unit and paddled for less than three minutes to one of the deeper holes in Noosa Sound (opposite Ricky Ricardo's Restaurant) where my wife had previously caught a few reasonably sized bream from the tinny (she always out-fishes me). | |
| I anchored with the stern facing into the tide using my "Dumbbell System" and proceeded to soak a few prawns using a light sinker and four-pound Fireline. The bites were few and far between however it was very pleasant to be out in the sun on a superb winter morning and during the two hours that I sat there I landed four bream ranging in size from 25cm to 29cm. | |
| There was one moment that jolted me out of my relaxed state when something really big took off peeling line from the spool at "a hundred miles an hour". To try to slow it before I lost too much line I attempted to tighten the drag slightly but overdid it and the line snapped. I cursed my stupidity and consoled myself with the thought that it was probably just a large ray. On reflection, a better course of action would have been to release the anchor and to follow the beast (whatever it was) rather than trying to turn it with four-pound line. | |
| Because it was the last day of our holiday I decided we should finish the week with fresh fish and chips for lunch and therefore kept three of the bream. | |
| So, in summation at the end of the week, the bream certainly were not "on the chew" like they had been in previous years but that is probably because we usually holiday at Noosa in July and we may have been a bit early for them this year. | |
| Submitted by: | Ross C. |
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| Date: | 14th June 2004 |
| Time: | 07:00am - 08:00am and 03:15pm - 05:20pm |
| Tide: | Low at 01:27pm (Munna Point) |
| Launch site: | Culgoa Point |
| Water temperature: | N/A |
| Lures/baits used: | Hard-bodied and soft plastic lures, bait |
| Report: | Morning session |
| I paddled to Woods Bay and joined three boats with fishermen casting hard-bodied and metal lures for Trevally around the moored yachts. All I saw here were Mullet jumping and none of us caught anything in the hour I spent there. I switched to soft plastics and moved on slowly flicking along the canal rock walls and eventually caught three Yellowtail (aka Yakka) on a 50mm olive green paddle tail grub under the boardwalk in front of the Sheraton Hotel. I decided to keep two of these bait-fish to use later in the day and headed back to my holiday unit at Culgoa Point for morning tea. Being a public holiday, heaps of boats were out fishing but I could see from my balcony that none of them were catching anything. | |
| Afternoon Session | |
| I trolled and cast hard bodied lures as I paddled from Culgoa Point almost up to the Noosa-Tewantin Road bridge across Weyba Creek but had no hits for almost an hour's work. | |
| I therefore changed to soft plastics and moved along the edge of the mangroves opposite and West of Ross Island. Casting ahead as I went, I soon captured a 30cm Dusky Flathead on an 80mm "Gary Glitter Squidgie Wriggler". After releasing the Flathead I drifted back downstream with the wind retrieving soft plastics over the sandbanks which could be described as "Stingray Alley" judging by the number of these fish that I either spooked or saw on the bottom in the clear shallow water. | |
| At the point opposite Keyser Island I tried a piece of the Yellowtail caught earlier in the day and hooked what I believed was a Trevally but it had swallowed the hook and cut through the 12 pound breaking-strain line before it was close enough to identify. | |
| By this time it was just after 05:00pm and I had to head back to the unit before it became too dark to be on the water without lights (about 05:20pm at this time of the year). I passed several fishing boats and people fishing from the bank on the way back but didn't see any fish pulled in. | |
| Submitted by: | Ross C. |
| Date: | 14th January 2003 |
| Time: | 05:00am - 08:00am |
| Tide: | High at 5:24am (Noosa Heads) |
| Launch site: | Culgoa Point |
| Water temperature: | 24-25°C |
| Lures/baits used: | Soft plastics and hard-bodied plugs |
| Report: | Day three. Decided to stay out of the wind so headed under the Munna bridge and down Weyba Creek to fish along the north side of Keyser Island (of course the downside of being out of the wind is that the sandflies found me...). |
| Only had one bump that failed to hookup and decided to change from soft plastics to a hard bodied lure. Tied on a new gold and orange Surebite Crawdad and worked it in around the snags and over-hanging mangroves. One cast landed nicely by a snag and within seconds the lure was hit as it floated on the surface while I took up the slack line. A short tussle later I landed a 25cm bream, neatly pinned through the lip. | |
| Submitted by: | Tony |
| Date: | 13th January 2003 |
| Time: | 05:30am - 08:30am |
| Tide: | High at 3:34am (Noosa Heads) |
| Launch site: | Culgoa Point |
| Water temperature: | 23-25°C |
| Lures/baits used: | Soft plastics |
| Report: | Yesterday had shown some promise, so I headed out to the "Frying Pan" again. Tied on a jelly prawn coloured No. 2 Squidgy Fish again since it had seemed to be what the fish had wanted. Caught a 40cm flathead and had a tail bitten in half - just behind the hook - by another. |
| By 6:30am the wind was getting stronger so I headed back to the sheltered waters around Noosa Sound. Paddled past the Sheraton bridge then fished along the south bank, scoring a 30cm flathead that really snaffled the jig. | |
| Submitted by: | Tony |
| Date: | 12th January 2003 |
| Time: | 05:30am - 08:30am |
| Tide: | High at 3:18am (Noosa Heads) |
| Launch site: | Culgoa Point |
| Water temperature: | 23-25°C |
| Lures/baits used: | Soft plastics |
| Report: | Fished the "Frying Pan". Hooked a flathead on a jelly prawn coloured No. 2 Squidgy Fish, but unfortunately pulled the hook. These Squidgys are quite soft compared to some other brands and this encounter had torn the tail enough that it wouldn't swim properly so I swapped the tail for one in the silver fox colour. |
| Couldn't attract any interest so switched back to the jelly prawn colour, this time in a No.3 Squidgy Wriggler. It wasn't long before I hooked another flathead, but this time was bitten off. Score: fish 2, Tony 0. | |
| I hadn't sighted either of the fish, but both felt to be in the 40-50cm range. Spooked two flathead as I paddled across the flats, one about 50cm, the other 30cm. | |
| Wind had been a problem all morning and was getting stronger (20-30kph). Since I had to paddle back across Noosa Inlet directly into the wind it was time to quit. | |
| Submitted by: | Tony |